A Gentleman of Fortune (2 page)

And now, as she sat beside the window of her bedchamber in Flora’s pleasant summer villa, she was beginning to suspect her own motives.

For, oddly enough, it had been a murder and the mystery associated with it which had first brought her together with Mr Lomax. So, was she now only taking an interest in this affair of Mrs Lansdale’s death because it was a means of bringing herself once more to the gentleman’s attention?

She smiled. Hers must be a very singular affection if it could only thrive upon infamy and mystery! But she would not allow one half of her to suspect the other. There could be nothing wrong in only asking a gentleman’s advice and, besides, she really did wish to discover the exact degree of danger in which Mr Lansdale stood.

Richmond, mused Dido as she walked to the post office with her letter next day, was a remarkably
proper
place. There was something particularly elegant and refined about the pretty little villas clustering around the river and up onto the hill, with their verandas and their French windows and their shady gardens. Maybe, she thought, it was this air of prosperity and tranquillity; the scent of syringa and lime trees; the sight of comfortable barouches and fashionable little landaulets driving by, which made the rumours Mrs Midgely was spreading so very shocking.

It certainly was a very strange, distressing business. This morning poor Flora was still suffering from nervousness and headache, and Dido’s resolve to silence Mrs Midgely and save Mr Lansdale from a dangerous slander was compounded as much of compassion as a strong desire for justice.

But, as she walked, she had to confess to herself that there might be another, secondary motive which was rather less virtuous. She could not help but feel it would be very pleasant indeed to have something to
think
about! For the unaccustomed leisure of the past week had left her mind quite remarkably empty.

It was, she acknowledged, extremely kind of her cousin to invite her to Richmond. For, although Flora had been considerate enough to solicit her company as a favour and to represent herself as in need of a companion while her husband was absent on business, Dido knew that the visit was intended to be a holiday. And never had she been more in need of a holiday; for the past winter had been spent attending upon a very young, very nervous
sister-in-law
and her new and sickly child.

However, Dido was beginning to suspect that unmarried women who were past their youth were not constitutionally suited to holidays and that the usual system of employing them to their families’ advantage as temporary, unsalaried nurses, governesses and nursery maids had more kindness in it than she had previously supposed.

While she had been in Hampshire, though Henrietta had been a no more rational companion than Flora, Dido had had little time to spare from the demands of colic and red-gum and the leaking of melting snow into the pantry, to notice the deficiency.

Here, in the luxury of Flora’s summer villa, she was nearer to suffering from ennui than she had ever been in her life before – and had, furthermore, too much time in which to remember the many perfections of Mr Lomax.

She stopped. She was come now to the substantial,
redbrick
bulk of the Lansdale’s house, and its closed shutters, its weedless gravel sweep and its sombre cedar tree seemed to throw an air of mourning across the hot afternoon. The gateposts were topped with imposing urns of stone and, on the left-hand post, there was a very fine, very new sign with the name of
Knaresborough House
carved in thick black letters. It looked remarkably respectable, and to imagine a murder taking place in such a house was all but impossible.

She stepped away, and, as she did so, she noticed that upon the opposite side of the road was Mrs Midgely’s villa – with little Miss Prentice watching from the back parlour window.

Dido paused, looking thoughtfully from one house to the other – and at the three or four yards of dusty road which was all that divided them. And she wondered… Perhaps the very proximity in which Mrs Midgely and Mr Lansdale lived had some bearing upon the case…

The post office was crowded: so very full of ladies and bonnets and gossip and little yelping lap-dogs that there was no one free to attend to Dido at the counter and she was obliged to wait. The room was confined and stuffy. Its small, dusty window and its dark panelled walls made it so very gloomy after the brilliance outside that at first she could recognise no one in the little crowd.

Then, after a moment or two, when her eyes had grown accustomed to the poor light, she saw that the young woman standing before her at the high counter was Mrs Midgely’s ward, Mary Bevan, enquiring after letters. A narrow ray of dusty sunlight falling through the office’s single high window was just catching the side of her fresh, delicate cheek, displaying the lovely long dark eyelashes to great advantage. And, as Mary turned away from the counter, putting a letter into her pocket, Dido could not help but wonder anew that so very elegant a creature should be the ward of such a vulgar woman as Mrs Midgely.

Miss Bevan smiled and began upon a gentle greeting, but her words were immediately lost in the loud throwing open of the door behind them and the bustling entrance of her guardian. Nearly everyone in the room turned to see who it was.

‘There you are Mary! I wondered where you were got to! And Miss Kent too, I believe,’ peering through the gloom. ‘Very pleased to see you, I’m sure Miss Kent.’

Mrs Midgely was a large woman of about fifty years old, dressed in yellow patterned muslin with a great many curls on her head and a great deal of colour in her broad cheeks. ‘Such a delightful exploring party yesterday,’ she continued. ‘I am sure we are all very much obliged to dear Mrs Beaumont for inviting us. You may tell her that she will soon receive a letter of particular thanks from me.’

Dido began upon a civil reply, but was not suffered to continue long. Mrs Midgely was just come from the haberdasher’s and so was full of news and delighted to have chanced so soon upon someone to whom she could tell it.

‘Well, Miss Kent,’ she burst out, ‘it seems it was the Black Drop that did the damage. Mrs Pickthorne says that Mr Vane says it was the Black Drop for sure.’

‘The Black Drop?’ repeated Dido.

Mrs Midgely smiled broadly and comfortably: sure of having her attention. ‘It was,’ she said loudly, ‘the Black Drop which killed Mrs Lansdale.’

There seemed to be a little quietness around them in the post office: a sense of listening. Dido noticed that poor Mary Bevan’s eyes were turned upon the floor and a blush of shame was creeping up her cheek. It seemed that years of experience had not inured the girl to the behaviour of her guardian.

‘And what,’ asked Dido, as quietly as she might, ‘what is the Black Drop?’

‘It is,’ announced Mrs Midgely, ‘a barbarous medicine, made in the north country, which Mrs Lansdale had got into the habit of using. The
Kendal
Black Drop it is called.’

‘Kendal?’

‘Kendal,’ said Miss Bevan quickly, ‘is a town in Westmorland – near Mrs Lansdale’s home – quite near to the Lake Country I believe. I wonder, Miss Kent, if you ever happened to read Mr West’s delightful
Guide to the Lakes?’

It was a valiant attempt to turn the conversation but the poor girl might as well have held up her hand to halt a raging bull. There was no stopping her guardian from telling her news.

‘The Kendal Black Drop,’ she reiterated with great weight – and cast a withering look at poor Mary. ‘It is a stuff four times stronger than laudanum and it seems that poor Mrs Lansdale was quite addicted to its use.’

‘I see.’

‘And dear Mr Vane is sure that if she had but taken his advice and given it up, he could, in the end, have cured her of all her illnesses. For, you know, Miss Kent, he is a very clever man…’

‘And so, Mr Vane believes that it was her use of this medicine which brought on Mrs Lansdale’s seizure?’ said Dido more loudly. ‘What a very unfortunate
accident
.’

She attempted to step away to deal with her business at the counter, where there was now a vacancy. But so eager was Mrs Midgely to finish her tale that she laid a hand upon her arm.

‘Well,’ she continued in the same inconveniently loud voice. ‘It was the Black Drop killed her for sure.
But a great deal of it
. He is quite sure that she had drunk
four times
as much of the stuff as she should have done.’

‘Four times?’ echoed Dido. Internally she could not but admit it was a very large amount. But she only said, ‘how…regrettable.’

‘Well, what Mr Vane cannot understand is this: how did she come to drink so much all at once?’

‘I am sure,’ said Miss Bevan firmly, ‘that with so powerful and dangerous a medicine, an
accident
, though very sad, is hardly to be wondered at.’

‘Quite so,’ said Dido, hastily putting aside her own doubts.

‘Accident indeed!’ cried Mrs Midgely. But she had said all she wished to say and seemed well satisfied with the looks of interest she was receiving from the people around her. She allowed Dido to escape to the counter. ‘And did you get any letters?’ she asked Mary.

‘No, Ma’am, none at all.’

Dido turned back at the sound of the lie – and saw that it had brought another, brighter, blush to Mary’s cheeks.

Next morning Dido accompanied Flora upon a visit of condolence to Henry Lansdale. She was very eager to meet him; reasoning that a man who could earn such affection from his friends and such malice from his neighbours, could not fail to be interesting.

It was another exceedingly hot day with not a cloud to be seen in the sky. Down beyond the river the hay was being cut and the scent of it carried right into the town. The two women walked slowly along the tree-shaded street.

‘I do not doubt,’ said Dido after walking for some time in silence, ‘from everything I have observed, that Mrs Midgely is a very malicious woman. But what I cannot yet quite determine is why her malice should be particularly directed against Mr Lansdale. Do you know of any reason why she should be his enemy?’

‘No, I do not!’ Flora Beaumont frowned prettily in the deep shade of her bonnet, her soft white nose wrinkling in a way which always put Dido in mind of a rabbit. ‘He is such a
very
delightful man. Why, I cannot conceive that he could have an enemy in the whole world! And besides, Mrs Midgely does not
know
him.’ Her lips puckered in a childish pout. ‘The Lansdales have been here but a month and Mrs Midgely is not even upon visiting terms with them, you know.’

‘Then perhaps she had
heard
something ill of him.’

‘But I have told you, there is nothing ill to hear! Nothing at all!’

‘There were, I understand, quarrels between aunt and nephew.’

‘Oh, but they were nothing! It was just her way.’ Flora paused in the shade of a tree, twisting one finger daintily in the long ribbon of her bonnet. ‘I rather fancy she liked to quarrel sometimes, you know. There was always a great making up afterwards.’

‘Perhaps,’ Dido suggested, trying her best not to injure her cousin’s sensitive feelings, ‘perhaps it is jealousy which turns Mrs M against him. He is after all so very fortunate – a poor young man taken in by his aunt, and now inheriting a great estate in Westmorland…’

‘Dido! Do not talk so! I cannot
bear
it. You sound so
horribly
suspicious.’

‘No, no,’ Dido assured her hastily. ‘I am not at all suspicious. I am only trying to understand why other people might be suspicious.’

‘Well!’ cried Flora, clapping her hands together. ‘I can tell you why such a woman as Mrs Midgely is suspicious. It is because she is spiteful and cruel…and horrid. And we
must
find a way to silence her.
You
must find a way, Dido. You are the clever one. The whole world is forever saying how very clever you are.’

‘I am sure I am very much obliged to the world for its good opinion. And I certainly intend to silence Mrs Midgely if I can. But…’

She stopped suddenly because they had come now through the gates of Knaresborough House and, as they started up the sweep, she had caught sight of something rather strange.

A young boy in a gardener’s smock was digging a hole beneath the great boughs of the cedar tree which stood close by the gate. As Dido and Flora watched, he thrust his spade into the pile of excavated earth, picked up a bundle wrapped in sacking and dropped it into the hole.

‘Oh dear!’ cried Dido, almost without thinking, ‘is that a grave you are making?’ Impelled by overwhelming curiosity, she hurried towards him, leaving Flora frowning upon the gravel.